Welcome

Newsletter

Welcome to the first newsletter for the HUGE Project.

The Hydrogen Utilization & Green Energy (HUGE) project is a €1.4 million 3-year project, which started on the 1st of June 2019. The project is funded by the Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) Programme.

The HUGE ambition is to raise awareness of the use of green hydrogen as a viable energy vector for remote and rural communities in housing, transport, and industry.

The project brings together organisations and research institutions across the NPA area with experience in renewable energy, green hydrogen, and the challenges of living in remote and rural communities.

The project aims to deliver on three key tools and services over the coming years: a Techno-Economic Assessment tool, a Hydrogen Utilisation Business Model, and a Hydrogen Knowledge and Technology Transfer Platform. We will be exploring these tools and services throughout our newsletters.

For more info on the project and to sign up to our mailing list please email info@huge-project.eu

The HUGE Project is led by the Environmental Research Institute, North Highland College, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland.

Project partners can be found from across the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme Region.

Project partners include:

• The Highland Council (Scotland)

• Action Renewables (Northern Ireland)

• University of the Faroe Islands

• Lappeenranta University of Technology

• National University of Ireland Galway

• Icelandic New Energy

• Aran Islands Energy Coop

Kick-Off Meeting

In July 2019 HUGE project partners met at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) campus in Galway, Ireland for the kick-off meeting.

To begin, NUIG had organised a public seminar titled Decarbonising Ireland with Zero-Carbon Technologies. The seminar had the participation of around 100 people coming from academia, companies, communities and the general public.

Several successful examples of the use of hydrogen in different European countries were presented as well as a brief introduction to the HUGE Project.

Seán Kyne TD opened the seminar with a speech on the relevance of new zero-emission technologies to combat climate change in Ireland.

Later in the afternoon and into the following day the HUGE project partners were joined by representatives from HUGE associate partners to discuss the strategy and development of the project.

Each work package presented on their respective tools and identified where synergies existed. Project partners feel that the success of the project lies in working closely together between both tools and countries.

Associate partners were keen to input their hydrogen experience in Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Ireland, and Norway.

After our first day of meetings the project partners had the opportunity to look around the Toyota Mirai, one of the first hydrogen fuel cell cars to be sold in the world.

Scottish Stakeholder Workshop

The Scottish Stakeholder Workshop was held in the Highland capital city of Inverness at the end of November. The event was well attended by representatives of both end users and stakeholders across the Highlands and Islands.

After a brief introduction to HUGE by project coordinator Desislava Todorova a brief overview of hydrogen and its potential uses was given by Magnus Davidson of the Environmental Research Institute.

The day was split into different sections to allow the project to elicit responses vital for the development of the three different tools.

The attendees were supportive of the hydrogen economy but we concerned about the challenge of bringing down the cost of hydrogen. They also felt that there was a need to ‘make hydrogen boring’ for better public acceptance.

Scotland, and particularly the Highlands and Islands, have a strong recent history of hydrogen development building off a large renewable resource. A lot of the discussion looked at how the HUGE project could learn from hydrogen developments that have already taken place. It was felt that there was a need for the HUGE project to go beyond the traditional uses seen so far.

Part of this discussion focussed on the ‘by-products’ of hydrogen production such as oxygen. A number of potential end-users of hydrogen also identified oxygen as a potential key selling point for moving into the industry.

One of the key outcomes of the discussion focussed on regulation and the inability of Distribution Network Operators to speculate. This means there’s uncertainty in planning and therefore a difficulty in identifying where hydrogen may offer solutions in the future. The event organisers felt that this was important to take forward in our planning tools.

For more info in Scotland please contact: Magnus Davidson magnus.davidson@uhi.ac.uk

Ireland Info-Gathering Workshop HUGE project partners from Ireland met on the 21st of November 2019 to present tostakeholders and end-users of the region the three tools to be developed in HUGE.

On November 21st, partners of the HUGE project form Ireland and Northern Irelandmet at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) with local stakeholders andend-users in order to discuss the challenges and opportunities of using hydrogen as azero-emission fuel to support sustainable communities.

The workshop brought together stakeholders and end-users from all Ireland to discussopportunities and challenges for the deployment of hydrogen technologies in ruraland peripheral regions. Namely, green energy production via excess wind, marine,and/or solar energy for use in transportation, power-to-gas, energy storage, gas forindustries, among others.

In the workshop, the three tools to be developed in HUGE (techno-economic, businessand training), which aim to bring sustainable solutions for communities situated onthe north and west coast of Ireland were presented.

During the workshop stakeholders and end-users participated in a roundtable withHUGE partners and scientific experts to discuss the advantages of using hydrogen asan energy carrier. In the session, it was agreed that it is necessary to develop trainingtools about technologies for producing H2 in order to engage politicians, stakeholdersbut mainly end-users. The event concluded with an activity where all attendees andexperts consented that transporting, heating and tourism are the most interestingapplications in the region. However, funding, political will, and public awareness arecrucial factors for its development.

For more info please contact: Dr. Roberto González Gómez roberto.gonzalez@nuigalway.ie